I truly believe that Native Americans had the truest and deepest spiritual connection to Mother Earth. They lived as one with Mother Earth and did not live as we do today, in terms of believing that humans are the supreme being. They lived in harmony with the truest spirits the animal and nature. I have always felt a connection to this Native American spirit."George Cornell, a professor at Michigan State University (who is also Ojibwe), supports this view of the Indian “perception of the environment”:
Generalizations about Native American philosophy / spirituality are also on firm footing when discussing the earth. Native peoples almost universally view the earth as a feminine figure . . . . The relationship of Native peoples to the earth, their Mother, is a sacred bond with the creation. . . . Native peoples viewed many of the products of the natural environment as gifts from the Creator. . . . Man, in the Native American conception of the world, was not created to “lord” over other beings, but rather to cooperate and share the bounty of the earth with the other elements of the creation. . . ."
The article continues:
"In particular, in regard to the Indian relationship to “the landscape,” Momaday feels the Indian has always “centered his life in the natural world. He is deeply invested in the earth, committed to it both in his consciousness and in his instinct. In him the sense of place is paramount. Only in reference to the earth can he persist in his true identity” (1989, 14). He contrasts this idealized relationship with nature with the mainstream American attitude that sees the land as a commodity, “an object of trade and utility.” In contrast, the Indian does not have a sense of ownership of land..."
